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Frits BOLKESTEIN	John MOGG	Anthony Howard	Bernhard Müller	Paul Schwander

Paul Schwander and Software Patents

Paul Schwander, French citizen, Alsatian, born 195x, worked as a liaison officer of the EPO in Brussels during the years from the Greenpaper through the Consulation. He was in charge of the IPR Helpdesk project at the Commission's General Directorate for Enterprises and managed for a study on SMEs and software patents in the name of DG Enterprise. Both IPR-Helpdesk and the DG Enterprise study, although implicitely lending legitimacy to software patent practise of the EPO, showed a slightly more critical spirit than most of what emanated from the EPO and DG Internal Market at the time. In 2001 Schwander left the Commission. In early 2002 he was working at the EPO in The Hague.

http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/
IPR Helpdesk on Software Patents

Patent Movement Activities in the name of the European Commission: The Directorate General for the Internal Market of the European Commission is completely under the tight control of the patent movement, especially its british section. The careers of the Industrial Property unit cadres are confined to the patent establishment. They would take a personal risk if they deviated from the very narrow ideology generated by decade-long organisational in-breeding within the patent institutions. Moreover, the European Commission needs (or believes that it needs) the EPO's support in order to carry out its ambitious plans of installing a Community Patent and therebey transferring power from Munich to Brussels. It has been buying this support by offering to give the EPO a carte blanche for software patents. This policy of the DGIM makes some people in DG Infosoc and other Directorates unhappy, but these people have so far not formed a serious counter-weight.

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